ADDRESSING AND BREAKING THE “AK STIGMA” I feel very humbled that the good folks over at American Partisan magazine chose to reprint an article I wrote way back in 2015. My sincerest Thanks go out to NC Scout and Kit Perez for all their hard work. Please take some time and go over and…
Category: Know Your Weapons
Military Weapons From the Past: Japanese ZH-29 Copy
This is a really interesting one for all you WW2 and Weapons buffs. Ever wonder why more countries did not successfully field large numbers of Semi-Auto Infantry rifles like the U.S. did with the M1 Garand in WWII? Listen Up! You Can Read More About This at Forgotten Weapons
Obscure Weapons: The Browning Gas-Toggle Pistol
On the April 20th, 1897, now-legendary firearms-designer John Browning received four patents for various pistol designs. These included two recoil-operated systems, a blowback design and — most interestingly — a pistol using a gas-operated toggle action. Browning had developed the gas-operated design a few years earlier in 1894 and ’95. It was actually Browning’s first pistol design. Unfortunately, it also…
Military Weapons From the Past: The British EM Series – The First Bullpup Design from the 1950’s
By late 1947 the British Army’s Armaments Design Department had designed three principal rifles for the Infantry Personal Weapon program. The new rifles got their official designations in January 1948. They were Stanley Thorpe’s EM-1, the EM-2 designed by Capt. Kazimierz Stefan Januszewski and the EM-3, the latter the brainchild of Major J.E.M. Hall, an…
Military Weapons From The Past: Burton 1917 Light Machine Rifle
America’s first assault rifle? Well, it does meet all the requirements – select-fire, intermediate cartridge, and shoulder-fired. It was never actually fielded, though. The Burton Light Machine Rifle was developed during World War One, with the firing model completed in 1917. It was intended as an aircraft observer’s weapon for attacking balloons – a role…
Military Weapons From The Past: Smallest Guy Gets The BAR?
One of the most beloved and hated weapons of World War II was the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). Another of John Browning’s classic designs, it was literally the first Squad Automatic Weapon. Though it lives on in weapon lore, like we said earlier, it had its detractors. World War II Marine William Manchester wrote in…
Military Weapons From The Past: Swiss 1893 Mannlicher Calvary Carbine
I have an affinity for Swiss Bolt Actions. The Schmidt-Rubin was one of my first Curio and Relic Firearms and the 7.5×55 Swiss is one the more accurate calibers of the C/R Bolt Actions.-SF The Swiss were the first country to adopt a bolt action repeating rifle with their Vetterli, and followed this by changing…
Know Your Weapons: The “Toophan”; The Iranian TOW Missile Knockoff
The CIA program to supply Arab rebels in Syria has made TOW anti-tank guided missiles a nearly ubiquitous sight in media coming from the conflict. But the United States might not be the only country waging a covert war with TOW (or TOW-like) missiles in the Middle East. Iranian reverse-engineered TOW anti-tank guided missiles, dubbed…
World War II Era Weapons: The Spy Pistol Used To Resist Nazi Occupation
Equipped with an effective silencer and easily taken apart to hide its true purpose, the Welrod was the perfect pistol for resistance operatives in Nazi-occupied Europe. The Welrod is one of the best-remembered pieces of real-life James Bond gear manufactured by Special Operations Executive. SOE was a clandestine department set up in 1940 in the…
Military Weapons From The Past: The Spanish FR-8 “Cetmeton” Rifle
The FR-8 is a Spanish rifle manufactured in the 1950s as part of Spain’s adoption of the CETME semiautomatic rifles. Spain was not only moving to their first semiauto rifle, but also changing from 8mm Mauser to the new 7.62mm NATO. It was not possible to immediately equip everybody with the new rifles, so a…